The Rest, of the Rest of the Story

“What do you need?” asked the colonel.

                “I need an investigator to inspect my plane.” I said. I was back at international airport the morning after the boy died in the plane. If you missed that part of the story you can read about it here.

I had just spent the past hour and half trying to get the drug police to stamp my flight plan so that the flight planning office would accept it. There had been nobody in the drug police office to stamp my flight plan. I went back out to the platform where the K-9 drug police were and told them that there was nobody in the office and asked them to call somebody. Back I went into the office and still nobody was there. This took place a number of times. Each time I would have to go through security. I needed a drug police investigator to inspect the plane with the K-9 drug police, but there had been nobody in the drug police office. The police were busy with airline flights.

A colonel was inspecting the airport drug police. I told the colonel about the mother that was waiting at the domestic airport with the coffin on the platform. I showed him some of the pictures from the day before and he said that he would go look at the plane with the K-9 drug police. I don’t know if this had some effect on when we were later investigated by the drug police. You can read about when we were investigated.

There is no aviation gasoline at the international airport, so I had to make the five minute flight to the domestic airport to fuel the plane. I landed and pulled up to the fuel pumps and told the guy there to fill the plane with fuel. I turned around and found fuel running out of the wing onto the asphalt. The plane has four fuel tanks, but only two usable. The two long range auxiliary tanks had been disconnected from the main fuel tanks to work on resealing them. The long range tanks had a placard stating “Inoperative. Do Not Fill.” in English. The fuel guy only spoke Spanish. The placards did not avert the tank being filled. I had forgotten to tell him which tanks to fill, and he filled the long range tanks.

It was surprising how well the unsealed tanks held fuel. If the tanks had leaked any slower, I may not have noticed the fuel dripping out and got in the plane to move it across the platform. That would have been very bad. When this model of airplane engine is started hot it often shoots some flame out the exhaust onto the ground under the belly. That would have most likely have ignited a large fire at the fuel pumps.

I was relieved to have noticed the fuel leak. The plane was pushed to a spot on the platform off by itself. The fire fighters came out and we watched as the fuel leaked out of the long range tanks onto the ground and evaporated. Now I had a problem. They would not put fuel in the operational main tanks, and the mother was waiting on the other side of the platform with her son in a coffin. I amde a quick trip to the cargo section of the airport and bought a permanent marker and wrote a placard over the long range fuel tanks in Spanish. This calmed the worries of the authorities and we waited for the plane to dry out before pulling it over to the fuel pumps for a second try.

The mother with her deceased son returning home.

The boy loaded into the ambulance in Guayaramerin.

Those two days were very exhausting stressful days for me, but they were great days for God. The rest of the story was uneventful. I flew the mother with her dead son back home to the rest of their family. They were very grateful. I want to thank everybody who makes it possible for us to help people in need. Thank you for your prayers, they help a lot (i.e. not going up in smoke at the fuel pumps ect.). Thank you for your financial support to make this happen.

God bless,

Steven Wilson